Examining Job Seekers' Motives of Impression Management Tactics on Social Networking Sites and their Assessment by Recruiters
Enschede, November 16
th, 2011 D.A. Molenaar, MSc.
Master Business Administration, HRM Track Student number: 0091715
University of Twente, Enschede
Supervisors
Dr. T. Bondarouk
Dr. H.J.M. Ruël
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Management Summary
Recruiters nowadays have started focusing their attention towards Social Networking Sites (SNS) for they provide an ideal basis to judge one‟s personality on. Even though SNS provide an ideal basis for jobseekers to present themselves towards others, research on this topic has been scarce.
This thesis describes the process of our investigation towards this phenomenon. The thesis takes the reader through the process of investigation, from idea generation and journal selection towards the eventual end-product of a research paper.
In the papers described in this thesis, we first describe how we developed scales for quantitatively measuring various online Impression Management tactics that job seekers can employ on SNS in order to positively present themselves to others. Using a sample of 186 students from various universities, a confirmatory factor analysis showed that self-promotion, supplication, ingratiation and photograph usage can be viewed as dimensions of online Impression Management tactics. We used our developed scales to investigate the potential effectiveness of online users using these Impression Management tactics. The usage of online Impression Management tactics was compared with what recruiters assess as important Impression Management tactics on SNS to create a measure of job seekers‟ behavioral effectiveness of Impression Management tactics.
We showed that self-promotion and photographs was used significantly less often by job seekers
than recruiters would expect given their perceived importance. Both supplication and ingratiation
showed no significant differences between job seekers and recruiters in terms of their use. Finally,
we investigated the possible motives for adopting online Impression Management tactics by job
seekers. A significant relationship was found between the intention to employ SNS-based job search
and usage of online Impression Management tactics. However, with the exception of photograph
usage, no significant relationships were found between a user‟s awareness of recruiters checking
online SNS profiles and the job seekers use of Impression Management tactics.
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Table of contents
Management Summary ... 2
Table of contents ... 3
1. Preface ... 4
2. Introduction ... 5
3. The paper for the journal of Cyberpsychology, Social networking and Behavior, and the paper for the International Journal for Selection and Assessment. ... 8
4. Final conclusions and discussion ... 36
5. Appendices ... 39
APPENDIX A-LETTER TOWARDS THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF OF CYBERPSYCHOLOGY,BEHAVIOR AND SOCIAL NETWORKING ... 39
APPENDIX B–REVIEWER COMMENTS ... 41
APPENDIX C-RECRUITMENT TEXT FOR PARTICIPATION OF STUDENTS AND RECRUITERS ... 45
APPENDIX D-INFORMED CONSENT ... 47
APPENDIX E-FINDING THE APPROPRIATE MEASUREMENT SCALES ... 52
APPENDIX F-RELIABILITY AND VALIDITY OF THE SCALES ... 60
APPENDIX G-RESEARCH REPORT FOR PARTICIPANTS... 67
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1. Preface
Whether you are in a HR professional, student, teacher, or in any kind of occupation, everyone nowadays seems to have their entire life posted on the Internet. In so-called Social Networking Sites every person can write down their entire life story with status updates on current activities, open links towards all of their online friends, picture albums, and so much more. This exciting world of opportunities might also have a downside: How does one ensure that only close friends will watch their site, and would you want to limit your online visibility in the first place? Limiting one's visibility might ensure a feeling of privacy, it might also stroke against the nature of having an online presence – the presenting of oneself and finding of new friends.
Another motive for having an online Social Networking Site profile might be that it could help the current situation you are in. For instance, when looking for love, why not create an online profile in a dating site and see whether there are others who have similar interests at the click of a mouse?
This thesis focuses on the job seeker, and whether Social Networking Sites poses advantages to this group. I focus on the current literature of Impression Management to find out whether job seekers online present themselves towards recruiters, and whether they use the same tactics as in, for instance, a face-to-face job interview. For the past months, I have used questionnaires to find out whether the old Impression Management models hold up in an online environment, and whether recruiters tend to focus on/give preference to certain tactics. The results are presented in two paper, which can be found in this thesis. Additionally, several appendices are added to give insights into the process of forming these papers. For example, appendix B gives insight towards the texts we used for gathering our recruiters and students. Appendix C shows our request for approval concerning the ethics committee. The entire process described in the appendices result in a set of papers revolving around Impression Management on Social Networking Sites. The following chapter will shortly introduce the reader to the subject, also explaining the difference in two papers.
After, the papers are presented and will lead in a discussion chapter, focusing more extensively on
the contribution of the two papers on scientific research.
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2. Introduction
As we state in the beginning of the paper for Cyberpsychology, Social Networking and Behavior, Social Networking Sites (SNS) are nowadays generally used not only to discuss hobbies and to share interests with others - increasingly employers are using them to screen job candidates.
Additionally, as we state in the beginning of the paper for the International Journal for Selection and Assessment, recruiters are nowadays also using SNS more often to perform an easy background check on a job seeker's personality. For both, this notion is not new. Research by Rosenbaum (2010) has demonstrated that SNS users create their profile with a wide variety of an 'imagined audience' in mind, indicating that we use for instance Facebook not only to present our self towards friends and family, but also towards persons unknown to us. Recruiters have jumped to this opportunity to create an easier way of checking a job seekers personality and past experiences. As Bohnert and Ross (2010) have stated, in line with what research by ComScore (2011) has shown, recruiters are now more and more aware of this feature and have started using SNS for this purpose. As Vazire and Gosling (2009) have shown, rating one's personality using SNS is a fairly cheap but effective way of personality checking, with a nearly sixty percent congruence in results between SNS background checking and using assessment centers. Not surprisingly, the feature of SNS background checking will continue to rise in popularity for recruiters.
Job seekers do have multiple ways of protecting oneself against this form of 'invasion', as Walther (2008) has shown. One of which is to shield off all information towards unknown others.
Not only can one never be sure that he/she shields off all their information from others (e.g. a recruiter can use others to become friends with a job seeker so they can still see all their personal information and judge their personality), this can also be a counter effective strategy. If one shields off their visibility, they might form the impression that they have something to hide. Perhaps a better strategy is to proactively promote their online presence by focusing on good qualities that the job seeker possesses. This form of promotion is called online Impression Management.
Impression Management isn't a very new concept; it was already introduced in 1959 by Goffman. Although some variations exist on the definition of Impression Management, we adapted the definition of Schlenker (1980) from a social to a more job-related setting, creating our working definition of Impression Management as „the conscious or unconscious attempt to control the
images that are projected in job-related social interactions‟. These social interactions can range from interactions prior to recruitment (e.g. presenting oneself „professionally‟ towards potential
employers) to interactions during or after their professional career (e.g. referring past employers
towards others). Studies towards Impression Management have been done in a wide variety,
however for online Impression Management, a scientific basis did not yet exist. Even more, some
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papers (e.g. Harris, van Hoye and Lievens, 2003) have even stated that online users are naturally inclined to shield off their 'online presence' as the awareness of privacy invasion becomes more apparent to them. These ideas do not coincide with the idea of Impression Management and
therefore, using the logic of problematization or the art of spotting problems (Alvesson & Sandberg, 2011), we find the topic of these papers sufficiently contributing to the theory of Impression
Management and Social Networking. From a practical viewpoint, providing both job seekers and researcher with a mutual understanding of each other‟s focus and usage of online Impression Management tactics will aid both parties in more accurate ratings of each other and thereby, a more effective means of selection. The job seekers knows the aspects that recruiters tend to focus on and can therefore adjust their tactics towards these, vice versa does this research aid recruiters in not only creating awareness of job seekers' Impression Management tactics, but also insights into which aspects to focus on. The two papers presented here focus on both parties in the Impression
Management model – the recruiter and the job seeker. Both papers present insight into the existence of online Impression Management tactics for recruitment purposes, and whether or not this is a multidimensional construct – as was demonstrated for offline Impression Management by Stevens and Krisoff (1995). The paper for Cyberpsychology, Social Networking and Behaviour also focuses on antecedent of this Impression Management in job seekers. Both papers result in a discussion written towards insight on job seeker behavior or recruiter behavior in online environment. After, a final chapter of this thesis will dive into several discussion points and relevant contribution of the papers. The appendices concern how the work was done. Here one can find relevant data from factor analyses and reliability analyses, but also papers requesting ethical approval from the ethics committee and a research report which was sent to all participants.
References
Alvesson, M., & Sandberg, J. (2011). Generating Research Questions Though Problematization.
The Academy of Management Review, 36, (2), 247-271.
Bohnert, D. & Ross, W.H. (2010) The Influence of Social Networking Web Sites on the Evaluation of Job Candidates. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 3, 341-347.
Walther, J.B. (2007). Selective self-presentation in computer-mediated communication:
Hyperpersonal dimensions of technology, language, and cognition. Computers in Human Behavior, 23, 2538-3557.
Goffman E. (1959) The presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Pinguin Books.Hall, J.A.
Harris, M.M., van Hoye, G., & Lievens, F. (2003). Privacy and Attitudes Towards Internet-Based
Selection Systems: A Cross-Cultural Comparison. International Journal for Selection and
Assessment. 11, 230-236.
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Rosenbaum, J.E. (2010). Just being themselves? Goals and strategies for Self-Presentation on Facebook. Paper submitted for the Southern States Communication Association 80
thannual conference, September 11
th, 2009.
Schlenker, B.R. (1980). Impression Management: The self-concept, social identity, and interpersonal relations. Monterey, CA: Brooks/Cole.
Stevens, C.K., & Kristoff, A.L. (1995). Making the right impression: A field study of applicant impression management during job interviews. Journal of Applied Psychology, 80, 587-606.
Vazire, S., & Gosling, S.D. (2004). E-Perceptions: Personality impressions based on Personal
Websites. Journal of Social Psychology, 87, 123-132.
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3. The paper for the journal of Cyberpsychology, Social
networking and Behavior, and the paper for the International Journal for Selection and Assessment.
The research described in the introduction of this thesis has resulted first in a paper for the journal of Cyberpsycology, Social Networking and Behavior. In the appendices, the attached letter to the editor can be found, in which we explain why we think the paper fitted right in with the journal’s purposes.
After a few months of review, two anonymous gave their thoughts on the paper to us back. The comments from the reviewers can be found in appendix B.
The second paper is written for the International Journal of Selection and Assessment. We believe
that the story will fit right in with the goal of this journal. We used the adapted version of the first
paper, and transformed the story towards recruitment needs instead of jobseeker needs.
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Examining Job Seekers' Motives of Impression Management Tactics on Social Networking Sites and their Assessment by Recruiters
Running Head: Impression Management tactics on Social Networking Sites
10 Abstract
While Social Networking Sites (SNS) provide a perfect basis for Impression Management
(Impression Management), the effectiveness of the latter has so far only been studied in offline job search settings. Impression Management is defined here as the conscious or unconscious attempt to control the job-related images that are projected in social interactions. In our study, we first
developed scales for quantitatively measuring various online Impression Management tactics that job seekers can employ on SNS in order to positively present themselves to others. Using a sample (N=186) from first-year to last-year university students from various universities from the
Netherlands, Slovenia en Germany, a confirmatory factor analysis showed that self-promotion, supplication, ingratiation and photograph usage can be viewed as dimensions of online Impression Management tactics. We used our developed scales to investigate the potential effectiveness of online users using these Impression Management tactics. Recruiters from various companies in the Netherlands, aimed at the assessment of students and young professionals, were assessed on how important they deemed the Impression Management behaviors used on SNS. The usage of online Impression Management tactics was compared with what recruiters assess as important Impression Management tactics on SNS to create a measure of job seekers‟ behavioral effectiveness of
Impression Management tactics. When perceived importance by recruiters and usage of Impression Management tactics by jobseekers are aligned, we can speak of effective Impression Management tactics behavior. Using the Wilcoxon signed rank test, we showed that self-promotion and
photographs was used significantly less often by job seekers than recruiters would expect given
their perceived importance. Both supplication and ingratiation showed no significant differences
between job seekers and recruiters in terms of their use. Finally, we investigated the possible
motives for adopting online Impression Management tactics by job seekers. Bivariate correlations
showed a significant relationship between the intention to employ SNS-based job search and usage
of online Impression Management tactics. However, with the exception of photograph usage, no
significant relationships were found between a user‟s awareness of recruiters checking online SNS
profiles and the job seekers use of Impression Management tactics. The implications for theory
development and future research directions are discussed.
11 Introduction
Social Networking Sites (SNS) are nowadays generally used not only to discuss hobbies and to share interests with others - increasingly employers are using them to screen job candidates¹. Job seekers have the opportunity to present themselves to companies by consciously creating an online 'presence'. This widely known process is what Goffman has termed Impression Management.² Although some variations exist on the definition of Impression Management, we adapted the definition of Schlenker
2from a social to a more job-related setting, creating our working definition of Impression Management as „the conscious or unconscious attempt to control the images that are projected in job-related social interactions‟. These social interactions can range from interactions prior to recruitment (e.g. presenting oneself „professionally‟ towards potential employers) to interactions during or after their professional career (e.g. referring past employers towards others).
Whereas this study intends to explore the relationship between SNS and Impression Management, we focus primarily on the interactions prior or during the recruitment and selection phase. This subject has recently certainly received much attention in both offline (e.g. Proost et al.
3) and online settings and is often seen as a new direction of research into recruitment (Rosenbaum
4Berkshire
5).
Recent studies have shown that Impression Management in online settings can be effective in terms of success on dating sites, while other studies have focused more on determinants of and motives for using Impression Management for both personal and employment-related usage (coined as
„upward impression management‟ by Rao et al.).
6-8These studies however only investigate the general extent of Impression Management usage, e.g. by asking general questions on how much jobseekers care about their image on SNS, whereas Stevens and Kristoff concluded that Impression Management, in general, is a multidimensional construct by which one can choose from different
„Impression Management tactics‟ to create a certain impression on others.
9A popular taxonomy for Impression Management tactics is the scale developed by Bolino and Turnley, and its validity has been shown in many, mostly offline, work situations.
8,9The scale includes five tactics: 1) self-promotion, which involves highlighting one's abilities or
accomplishments so as to be viewed as competent, 2) ingratiation, that is complimenting others to increase the target's level of liking, 3) exemplification, showing that one behaves like a model employee by going beyond and above the requirements of the job, 4) intimidation, that is creating the attribution of danger with others in order to protect one's reputation, and 5) supplication, which means advertising the recognition of certain limitations in order to appear needy.
The model by Bolino and Turnley has only been validated in offline settings, e.g. during
solicitor interviews and behavioral ratings on their Impression Management tactics. We argue that
the setting of SNS brings some new opportunities to present oneself towards others. One commonly
researched theme on SNS behavior is the presentation or shielding off of photographs. For instance,
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Steel, Evans and Greene (2005) found that certain behavioral aspects on photographs such as smiling or being shown with others results in higher inter-rater agreement of personality than when these aspects are not present. Related, Evans, Gosling and Carroll studied how well one could judge the SNS profile of known or unknown others. In the results, the SNS profile picture had a large impact on the ability to judge one‟s behavior. We therefore argue that jobseekers shield off their SNS profile pictures to avoid the stereotyping threat. Current theoretical Impression Management models do not include for this tactic, because only with the coming of SNS the shielding off of pictures became relevant to one‟s self-presentation. This research is therefore theoretically relevant because it intends to not only confirm but also extend the Impression Management framework.
From a more practical viewpoint, no study to date has investigated what Impression
Management tactics are used by job seekers in online settings such as SNS. Interestingly, there are many anecdotal success stories, and even handbooks written on the usage of online Impression Management by job seekers, but no-one has tried to develop tools to quantify the online usage of Impression Management tactics and to investigate online Impression Management effectiveness. As such, current knowledge lacks a validated instrument for measuring online use of Impression Management tactics. The creation of an instrument for assessing online Impression Management tactics would be a great advantage for researchers and practitioners, for example by enabling a comparison between offline and online Impression Management tactics in a job-related context.
Another purpose could be to study the effectiveness of using Impression Management tactics.
Existing instruments for offline usage of Impression Management tactics has given researchers (e.g.
Proost, Schreurs, de Witte, & Derous
13) the means to compare offline Impression Management tactics usage by job seekers and their importance as perceived by employer evaluators. As a result, a measurement of Impression Management effectiveness is achieved. When job seekers‟ usage of Impression Management tactics coincides with what is perceived as important by their observers (potential recruiters), we can argue that the usage of Impression Management tactics by job seekers is successful.
Currently, there is no validated instrument to quantitatively measure the usage of Impression Management tactics in online settings, and there have been no studies that have considered the effectiveness of particular Impression Management tactics. This is despite both the practice of, and the theoretical development on, recruitment and selection potentially benefitting greatly from such developments by redirecting their focus towards the usage of specific Impression Management tactics rather than relying on general impressions. This assessment leads to our first research question:
RQ1a: What SNS-based Impression Management tactics can be distinguished in job
seekers’ usage? RQ1b: How effective are these Impression Management tactics in a
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job-seeking context in terms of difference between Impression Management usage by job seekers and perceived importance of these Impression Management tactics by recruiters?
In a job-seeking context, research has indicated some possible motives for using online Impression Management tactics on SNS. Plummer, Hiltz and Plotnick
10examined job seekers' behavioral intentions in using SNS as part of their job application strategy. This job application could be for instance by searching not only job advertisement sites, but also SNS to browse for new jobs. One could nowadays also use SNS to advertise jobs via a network of friends promoting a vacancy towards a jobseeker, if he or she is open for these opportunities. With the coming of new SNS, new ways of promoting and finding jobs are offered. However, some basic elements in job seeking behavior might always be present. For example, the study of Plummer, Hiltz and Plotnick successfully tested a model where privacy concerns, beliefs in justice and risk, and performance expectancy were found to be determinants of job seekers' intentions to use SNS in applying for a job (by browsing through the available vacancies). Out of these determinants, the study
demonstrated privacy concerns to be a major factor in job seekers' consideration of using SNS in applying for a job. Combined with the study of Stevens and Kristoff
7, it seems reasonable to expect that an increase in a job seeker‟s intention to apply for a job is matched by an increase in the use of Impression Management tactics. However, it is still unknown which tactics will show an increase in usage when one decides to use SNS in applying for a job.
Another motive for applying online Impression Management tactics is a job seeker‟s awareness that their online presence can be viewed by any audience, including future employers.
Evidence from Walther
11suggests that mindfulness of the perceived audience is correlated with the motivations for editing one‟s SNS presence. Walther
11implies that a job seeker‟s awareness of their audience increases the extent of Impression Management tactical usage in computer-mediated environments such as SNS. However, Lewis, Kaufman and Christakis
12suggest that an increase in this awareness is followed by an increase in privacy concerns and, consequently, reduced usage of Impression Management tactics. It is therefore vital to also investigate the role of job seekers' awareness in relationship to the Impression Management tactics they use. By relating awareness to the various Impression Management tactics, a more nuanced image should result that could explain the apparently contradictory findings of Walther
11and of Lewis, Kaufman and Christakis
12. This is reflected in our second research question:
RQ2: What is the relationship between a job seeker’s awareness of their online presence and potential audience, their intention to use SNS in finding a job, and the specific Impression Management tactics they use on SNS?
Method
14 Participants
University students (N = 186) served as the participants for the job seeker element of the study. The participants (56,1% female, 43,9% male) all indicated that they used SNS. The participants' studies were primarily management-related (63.3% - e.g. Business Administration, Marketing), other mentionable studies were computer science (16%), psychology or communication studies (20%).
The choice of students is justifiable here since, as Basil
14argued, they are the demographic group of interest in the current study. A total of four different universities - located in the Netherlands,
Slovenia, Germany and Finland - participated in our study. Of the participants, 33.9% were German, 26.9% were Dutch, and 21.5% were Slovenian. Their mean age was 23.1 years (SD = 4.81). The complementary number of participants came from Australia, Brazil, Finland, Russia, and Uzbekistan however none of which accounted for more than four percent of the total participant population. An analysis of variance indicated no significant differences in Impression Management tactics between students of different nationalities or from different universities. Students were recruited via a network of university students and professors promoting the need to participate in this online study.
For measuring the perceived effectiveness of the job seekers' Impression Management tactics, recruiters (N = 131) formed our group of participants. These (mainly) corporate recruiters were selected via a network of online HR groups and other recruiters. The recruiters tended to focus on young professionals and are therefore ideal to compare with the student sample. All the
participating recruiters were Dutch, focused primarily on the selection of graduates from
universities and, of them, 123 participants indicated that they did use SNS to collect data about job seekers. The questionnaire was designed to reject recruiters who denied usage of SNS, and therefore the final number of recruiters in the study was 123.
An important issue that needs to be addressed is the variability in SNS. Analysis on students‟
responses show that 74% use Facebook the most, followed by LinkedIn with only 26%. However, because students were asked to give a top-three of most used SNS, no final conclusions could be made on which SNS our sample students had in mind when providing answers.
Procedure
After demographic questions and an assessment of the perceived frequency of SNS usage, students
were faced with a set of questions on their Impression Management tactics on SNS. Questions were
derived from the Impression Management scale of Bolino and Turnley
8and adapted for an SNS
environment. Each item was to be answered on a 7-point scale. The Impression Management scale
randomly contained five items each on self-presentation (α = .873) and photograph usage (α =
.734), and four items each on supplication (α = .814), ingratiation (α = .782), and intimidation (α =
.752). Sample questions are 'I show others my previous experience on SNS' for self-presentation; 'I
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shield off pictures on SNS that are unprofessional' for photograph usage; 'I act like I don't understand something on SNS to gain help' for supplication; 'I compliment others on SNS' for ingratiation; and 'I can intimidate others on SNS to maintain my image' for intimidation. Four items pertaining to defensive tactics were also included, but later excluded from the analysis due to their only moderate inter-item reliability (α = .673).
Following this, participants were assessed on their intention to use SNS in job seeking by three items (α = .882) and on their awareness of their online visibility by three items (α = .774).
These last two constructs of intention and awareness were administered using self-made scales and included questions such as 'I intend to search for a job using SNS' and 'I am aware that my SNS profile can be seen by unwanted others' respectively. All the items were to be answered using seven- point Likert scales.
Recruiters were essentially presented with the same Impression Management scale of various tactics as the students, but with each item assessing how important they judged that behaviors corresponding with the various Impression Management tactics that were observable on the job seekers' SNS. An example item is 'I find it important that job seekers on SNS show their previous experience' for self-promotion. In addition to the Impression Management tactics scale, they were also assessed as to their intentions in checking job seekers' SNS for a range of purposes, such as for monitoring a 'talent pool'. For assessing the effectiveness of job seekers‟ Impression Management tactics on SNS, we compared our student participants‟ answers on which Impression Management tactics they used with what recruiters said they considered important Impression Management tactics on SNS.
Results
Principal Component Analysis
A confirmatory factor analysis was used to determine which Impression Management tactics the student participants deployed on their SNS. A principal component analysis with orthogonal rotation (varimax) was conducted on the 24 items related to Impression Management tactics and photograph usage. The KMO measure was .872 and Bartlett‟s test result of Spericity,χ²(153) = 1295.36, p< .001, indicating that the items were sufficiently well correlated for factor analysis. Four components had eigenvalues over 1 and in combination these explained 63.3% of the variance. All the factor loadings were in the range of .518 to .854 and can therefore be classed as somewhere between acceptable and very good according to Kaiser
15.
One of the considered Impression Management tactics, exemplification, was eventually
excluded since the analysis failed to form a separate cluster for this component. With the exclusion
of exemplification, the items that did cluster confirmed our expectations that self-promotion
(component 1), supplication (component 2), and ingratiation (component 4) can be accurately
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measured using the scale adapted from Bolino and Turnley
8. Interestingly, limiting access to certain
„unprofessional‟ photographs (component 3) came out as an Impression Management tactic in itself.
This result confirms the first part of our first research question that there are certain Impression Management tactics on SNS that job seekers can use.
Effectiveness of Impression Management tactics
For this part of the research, a distinction was made among the students who had completed the questionnaire. Given that the usage of Impression Management tactics when applying for a job at the end of a university career was only of interest for the particular question on Impression Management tactics effectiveness, we focused for this part of the study only on students who indicated that they were nearing the end of their study. Our original sample consisted of students in various stages of their study, including first-year students who might not be very concerned with their professional image at the time. We argue that it was best to focus for this part of the study on last-year students for they are the most homogeneously concerned with Impression Management as they are close to finding a new job. Given the sample size was substantially reduced (n=73) by this choice and due to this choice our sample data was not normally distributed, the Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test was used to compare the Impression Management tactics of job-seeking students with what recruiters believe to be important aspects on SNS. The use of self-promotion was viewed as significantly less important (z = -5.91, p< .01) by job seekers (M = 2.49, SD = 0.92) than the importance attached to it by recruiters (M = 4.05, SD = 0.69). Photograph usage, or the deliberate concealing or deleting of photographs, was also significantly less (z = -4.86, p < .01) viewed as important by job seekers (M = 2.59, SD = 0.93) than what one might expect given the importance attached to this by recruiters (M = 3.49, SD = 0.83). The other Impression Management tactics considered, supplication and ingratiation, did not show significant differences between students and recruiters. These results partially confirm the second part of the first research question, that
supplication and ingratiation are the most effective Impression Management tactics as used by job
seekers and perceived by recruiters. Table 1 summarizes the means and standard deviations for the
Impression Management tactic usage by students, compared to the importance attached to these
aspects by recruiters.
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TABLE 1. MEANS OF RESPONSES ON IMPRESSION MANAGEMENT TACTICS: COMPARISON OF STUDENT USAGE AND RECRUITER PERCEPTIONS (n = 73)
STUDENT RECRUITER
MEAN STD. DEV. MEAN STD. DEV.
Self-promotion* 2.49 0.92 4.05 0.69
Supplication 1.46 0.57 1.81 0.64
Ingratiation 2.53 0.82 3.01 0.75
Photograph usage* 2.59 0.93 3.49 0.83
* Means are significantly different using the Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test at the .01 level (2-tailed).
Correlations between Impression Management tactics, Recruiter awareness, and SNS job-seeking
intention To answer our second research question, bivariate correlations were calculated between the job seekers‟ various Impression Management tactics, their awareness that recruiters would check their background on SNS, and their intention to use SNS in searching for a job. Table 2 displays the correlation coefficients between the assorted variables. Besides all the Impression Management tactics correlating significantly with each other, the intention to use SNS in finding a job positively correlated with self-promotion (r = .33, p< .01), supplication (r = .23, p< .01), ingratiation (r = .27, p< .01), and photograph usage (r = .27, p< .01). Although the participants‟ awareness that recruiters would access their SNS sites did not generally correlate significantly with their Impression
Management tactics, there was a significant positive correlation between awareness and photograph usage, albeit at only a 95% confidence interval. (r = .18, p< .05).
TABLE 2. CORRELATIONCOEFFICIENTS FOR IMPRESSION MANAGEMENT TACTICS, INTENTION TO SEARCH FOR A JOB USING SNS AND AWARENESS OF RECRUITERS CHECKING THEIR SOCIAL NETWORKING SITE PROFILE (N = 185)
SP SU IN PH AW IN
Self-promotion (SP) - .387* .632* .350* .140 .333*
Supplication (SU) .387* - .442* .214* -.029 .230*
Ingratiation (IN) .632* .442* - .385* .011 .272*
Photo usage (PH) .350* .214* .385* - .187* .272*
Awareness (AW) .140 -.029 .011 .187* - .224*
Intention (IN) .333* .230* .272* .272* .224* -
*. Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).
Discussion
The results presented here have shown that the Impression Management tactics identified by Bolino
18
and Turnley
8are on the whole recognizable in a SNS setting. The presence of online Impression Management on SNS is not only confirmed, the current study has also shown that online Impression Management tactics related to self-promotion, ingratiation, and supplication are distinguishable.
Interestingly, restricting access to, or deleting, unprofessional photographs on SNS could also be identified as a separate and distinct Impression Management tactic. This finding indicates that our previous Impression Management model needs to be updated so that it can be used for further research in online environments. As discussed in the introduction, new ways of presenting oneself towards other offers the availability of new Impression Management tactics. This study therefore confirms the offline Impression Management tactics studies, but is also in line with the notion of not showing too much information in online environments, as the studies of Evans, Gosling and Carroll demonstrate. , our research has shown that the former Impression Management tactics models can be used interchangeably with online and offline environments. The study has also shown that the intention of using SNS in finding a job is significantly correlated with using all of the considered Impression Management tactics, whereas awareness that recruiters would check SNS is only significantly correlated with photograph usage. While the latter finding confirms previous studies
12, which found that privacy concerns led SNS members to shield off certain parts of their profile, this does not seem to have significant effects on other forms of Impression Management tactical usage. Nevertheless, we must remain cautious in interpreting these results since our methodology does not allow influences to be firmly established. We are limited in making
conclusions on causality, although we do suspect that increased usage of Impression Management tactics will be a consequence of deciding to use SNS in searching for a job. We recognize that more in-depth research on this relationship is needed to strengthen the sense of causality.
With regard to the effectiveness of Impression Management tactics, the current study was able to find significant perceptual differences relating to self-promotion and to photograph usage, indicating that only supplication and ingratiation were viewed by both parties as similarly effective (and relatively less important than other aspects by the recruiters) Impression Management tactics.
An important remark here is that the usage of the various Impression Management tactics by job
seekers and the expectations of recruiters, and any similarities or differences in the scores of both
parties, does not say anything about the success of employing these tactics in terms of, for instance,
more quickly acquiring a job. What is does say however, is that for certain Impression Management
tactics one now knows that first, recruiters are checking SNS for these, but also that the expectation
of recruiters‟ perception is consistent with the actual usage. This consistency can arguably lead to a
decrease in errors in personality judgment and perhaps even higher selection accuracy. The danger
exists however -as with all such questionnaires- that in the study items were intuitively answered
with an extremely high or low score due to the phrasing of a question or its misinterpretation. The
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threat of between-person ambiguity was diminished by only choosing those factors that were both reliable and valid in the principal component analysis, both for students and recruiters. The risk of between-group ambiguity nevertheless still remains and could influence the results.
Even though some results must especially be taken with caution, the current study is the first to quantitatively assess the effectiveness of specific Impression Management tactics in an online environment. No earlier research on the effectiveness of Impression Management tactics has been demonstrated, because only with the coming of SNS researchers were offered a means of
comparing. If any, the current research confirms the study by Pan and Fan who state that impression management does not differ in computer-mediated environments or face-to-face settings – their study however didn‟t account for a SNS setting. The results have major implications for both practice and research. Recruitment and selection practitioners need to be very much aware that many job seekers do alter their SNS profile to offer a more professional impression, and might have to adjust their expectations towards this. Second, job seekers do not seem to be very aware of what recruiters want to see on SNS, which could lead to differences in expectations and, in the worst case scenario, a rejection. The results suggest that job seekers could be more effective in their Impression Management by focusing on promoting themselves as well as in closing off certain photographs to unintended audiences, even though they may not be aware of who may be looking. Recruiters need to be more aware that not every job seeker is as active in managing their SNS image as they
possibly imagine. The limitations in this study were first, the usage of a student sample as job
seekers, and also the number of students used. Even though this student group did provide us with
an opportunity to see certain development towards Impression Management tactics as student move
throughout their study, a student sample does not represent the entire population of job seekers. As
we have demonstrated with the results presented here, there is enough ground to base further
research on Impression Management tactics as used by a more generalized set of job seekers. Other
limitations in this study are concerned with the most used SNS by both recruiters and students. We
deemed it very important that our participants should be able to fill in our questionnaire based on
the SNS they indicated they used mostly. Using this argument, the study resulted in a more
generalizable model of online Impression Management tactics. However, this has confronted us
with issues on comparability, for instance between recruiters and students. Initial analyses on the
participants did provide us with some answers to this problem, however we were not able to
statistically compare the recruiter and student‟ responses due high variability between respondents
within-group. Given the highly practical nature of this problem, we encourage practitioners in
future research on this topic to focus on the limitation presented here so that proper comparison can
be made between groups. Limitations aside, from a research standpoint this study contributes to
Impression Management research with a quantitative basis on which to build further large-scale
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surveys on, and hopefully encourages researcher to see the opportunity of using SNS to quantify Impression Management behaviors and build on the foundations laid by the current study.
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